Kirjahaku

Cynthia Power is found dead in her garage. The cops declare it a clear case of suicide over the objection of her psychiatrist who asks P.I. Bertrand McAbee to investigate. As he does he becomes aware of a high school group called the Demosthenes Club that was formed in 1967. Cynthia was a member, along with seven other students. They were extremely gifted and went on to great success with the exception of one who drowned just before graduation in 1968. McAbee discovers the eight students had strained relations with each other. Cynthia became aware of information that unsettled her as she was putting together a book about the club, so much so that it becomes apparent to McAbee that her work and speculations would make her dangerous. In the course of his investigation he is inexorably drawn to Cynthias time in Sarajevo and the murder of her lover Toma. Eventually, he sees the need to visit Sarajevo and Belgrade to finally get a hold on this extraordinary case. Through the process of his work he will utilize his associates who have figured heavily through all of his cases. Augusta Satin, his best friend and purported lover; Pat Trump, his can-do secretary; Jack Scholz, his dangerous right-hand man; and the troubled Barry Fisk, his computer wizard. As the investigation proceeds, McAbee will deal with the five remaining members of the club. Now in their late sixties, all of them are tough, battle-hardened, and compulsively protective of the reputations and legacies. And yet, at least one of them is probably a murderer with ruthless instincts.

Grigori Rasputin was assassinated in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1916. By some accounts this Orthodox monk had extraordinary gifts. He was a healer, a psychic, and some said a warlock. The Czar, Nicholas II, and his wife Tsarina Alexandra (Alix), advanced his career due to their belief in these gifts. According to the show trials held by the Bolsheviks after the Communist revolution, Rasputin was lecherous and morally corrupt. To this day Rasputin is an extremely controversial figure. The Kremlin, up to Vladimir Putin himself, has become obsessed with Rasputin. A top priority concerns any known progeny of his because a renowned Russian scientist has validated a research study from India dealing with inherited characteristics. From these distant considerations a beleaguered wife, Joanna Goodkind, seeks consolation from a psychic and healer, Alexandra Speranskya, who resides in Davenport, Iowa, a city along the Mississippi River. That desperate meeting between the two women will precipitate a series of events that will bring P.I. Bertrand McAbee into what he will ultimately declare as the strangest case he has ever encountered. The psychic Alexandra Speranskya has sought obscurity for good reason. She knows her heritage and she knows her gifts. Her plan to be hidden runs afoul as she begins to sense the Bear, Russia. Again P.I. Bertrand McAbee and his cadre at ACJ Investigations will soon find themselves dealing with the unseen forces of the Russian State as they close in on the mysterious enigma of Alexandra Speranskya and the unscrupulous FSB, and one particular agent, Lena Dzik.

Former classics professor Bertrand McAbee, the reticent P.I and former classics prof, cannot avoid violence and mayhem. His high-powered brother is asked by the highest echelons in the Vatican to pursue the truth concerning a lawsuit brought against a priest who is a personal friend of the Pope. It's a charge of pedophilia. The priest, however, is considered by almost all who know him to be a man of extraordinary sanctity. Ostensibly at any rate, this should not be a case involving deadly violence. And yet it becomes so as McAbee probes into the priest's past and violence once again erupts into his world.